I've been having problems importing CDs into iTunes 4.7 and wanted to import some Christmas albums. Each attempt failed with the "whirling rainbow of death" as someone put it. The CD/DVD drive becomes noisy and the computer won't hardly respond. You can switch aps briefly, but you can't even bring up the "Force Quit" dialog.

The CD would try to play during the import, but as my iBook got slower and slower, the CD would cut in and out so it was annoying to listen to. I was also concerned that it might make it harder to import the CD (though I'd been able to import CDs previously, probably under iTunes 4.6, without these problems). So, I got into the habit of stopping the play back as soon as it started when trying yet again to import a CD.

Later, I was studying the import options, trying to see if there was something I could change about the way the CD was read (found nothing like that). I noticed there was an option to tell it not to play the CD while it was importing, so I unchecked it. The next time, I tried the import, it just worked. It turns out that just trying to play the CD at the same time as the import causes this problem! I imported my stack of CDs (8-9) with only one whirling rainbow for the whole set. It's usable again!

So, if you have this problem, go into iTunes Preferences and click on "Importing" at the top. Then clear the check mark from the box labeled "Play songs while importing" and try again. On the rare occasions when the whirling rainbow drowns everything, use a paperclip to pop the drive out (or disconnect it or whatever) and click "ok" when the computer complains that you shouldn't. Then uncheck the boxes for the songs that were imported successfully and try again. Hope this helps someone else, too...

[robg adds: I thought we'd covered this one here before, but I didn't see it in the database. Disabling play on import is a really good thing to do, especially if you have a slower Mac...]

my powerbook 667 DVI does the same thing except I have already disabled that option. It seems to be the hotter it gets the worse it gets and theses powerbooks get pretty hot pretty quick (which everyone is already aware of). When I installed panther I turned it off and let it sit all night and just to be safe put some ice packs under the thing to keep it cool because if my computer is hot it just fails to read CDs while making the noises you are explaining. Its not pleasant to listen to.

For those that already knew about the hint, above (I'm surprised this "hint" hasn't been mentioned before), and still face the "beachball" when importing a scratched or defective disc, try this:

•Obviously, stop the current (failed/failing) import.
•Set your import preferences to import as AIFF. Except for truly damaged discs this will work.
•Once the music files are imported as AIFF into iTunes, change your import prefs back to your preferred format and bitrate.
•Select the recently imported AIFF files and convert them. Advanced (menu)-> Convert Selection to XXX

9 out of 10 times, this "workaround" should work for all but the most damaged discs. Don't forget to delete the AIFF files when finished. This hint is hardly new but if people didn't know the hint, originally posted above, it stands to reason they won't know about this one either.

I noticed there was an option to tell it not to play the CD while it was importing, so I unchecked it.

Technically, it's playing the encoded music from your library of songs as it goes. With AAC it usually pauses until at least one full song has been written to the library. With MP3 it will play after some number of seconds (or blocks) of data have been written out. That is, it is not playing the song from the CD, but from on-disk MP3/AAC/AIFF. Test this yourself by ejecting the CD after it's been ripped. The music will continue to play, and your library view will show the "playing" icon next to the song.

This does not negate this hint, of course. In fact, it just reinforces the notion that this problem could be caused by this option. Having the altivec DSP stuff on the CPU do less work by not forcing it to decode data while it is encoding elsewhere it probably a good idea if you are having problems.